


Reinventing the Way Out

by Etnoe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Body Horror, Body Modification, Disabled Character, Espionage, Freedom, Helmstroll Emancipation, Helmstrolls, Multi, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 05:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15284958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: With the Condesce defeated, her Helmsman comes to Earth, left in the care of the heiress of Crocker Corp and a technician assigned to him by the Rebellion.There are still a few secrets and agendas to deal with, though...





	Reinventing the Way Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caracalliope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caracalliope/gifts).



* * *

**TRAVELLER DESIGNATION:** The Hellsman  
**SUBTITULAR DESIGNATION:** ...my Most Grievous fault...  
**SYSTEM STATUS:** LEGS HO XD But legs tho.  
**HOBBIES:** sssssscreaming  
**COUNTER-HOBBIES:** static-c-c-c-c-c  
**DESTINATION:** Final.  
**ITINERARY DETAIL:** Travelling via Moon Base Route. Earth, USA, Washington, Seattle, Crockercorp Central Lockdown. Authorisation provided by Rebellion Council Stabilisation Unit, verified as per application #11-11-11. Commencement: 20h00 5 July. Expected arrival: 20h20 5 July 2.

 

Meenah groaned and gestured at her heiress, a hand thrown up all _can you believe this_. "He's been editing the file again!" She elbowed one of the soft panels in the wall of the castle to prod him, but did it with a snapping curl of her hair so she wouldn't have to get up from her couch-throne, which was a surprise. With all the jokes Meenah had decided she just had to share with his rib cage, he was already well aware her elbows were honed for war, but the hair had never managed the same before. Either it had jumped up a few levels again or there was something wrong with the sensation transfer to the castle core.

Good. Great! Go go go. It was about time he got decoupled from this third-rate shambles of a landbound heap, if they were at the point of giving the Crocker kid information about his transfer from Mars to Earth.

He sent a cursor flying across the screen; it was shaped like an old-school anchor, dammit, instead of being an artistic rendering of Meenah getting into her suit when she got up. When had she hacked that back? Okay, guess that decoupling process was faster than he'd thought. Legs ho, indeed.

The cursor walloped into a letter, knocking it into a spin that turned it into a different one.

 **TRAVELLER DESIGNATION:** The Helmsman.

Meenah contemplated that soon-to-be lie. She was still Her Imperious Condescension everywhere official and in her actions, but carried a new subtitular designation: The Deposed. Hatchname: a secret shared by two; and far too often, across spans of empty darkness or in the thick of war and with an up-throttling of input power, there were no names but simply She who was She and Full of Shit instead of She who was Ship and Full of She. Oh, he just could not wait to be comprehensively panfucked about all the things he was going to miss about the last thousands of sweeps. A part of him decided to succumb to the gravitational spiral early, and to keep watching Her possessive, regal posture in order to store away what remained to him.

Better parts of him made note of the fact that Kid Crocker also hit pause on interaction - but she didn't go in for statuesque grandeur, her eyes oddly fixed and her lips thinner, until she snapped out of it and then made a point of looking Meenah's reaction over.

"Right! So that's it, the only change you want to make to the information?" Crocker said with her standard can-do brightness.

"Guess it's the only change he wants to make. Hasn't shown perchonality in the last TWENTY SWEEPS--"

Filthy fucking lies, peddled as per standard. He'd been all personality throughout getting kicked out of the universe along with her. But he had stopped talking to her since about the last of her lusus's loving tentacles had given them the final prod through the gentle suggestion of reality, and had finished ushering them into this neighbouring universe.

"--and now it's oozing into odd corners of the castle instead of anything more useful. But it's naut like the other ship isn't accurate. Now. About what I get in trade for my Helmsman..."

Empress and Heiress settled in to do what they loved. It would be a good idea to pay attention to their negotiations, but he had a hard time settling to it and half his attention switched to figuring out the decoupling sequence separating him from the castle. He was less used to being in the castle than being in Ship - hell, he had to go into memory back-up to find the last time Meenah had needed to whip an emergency castle out of her sylladex, on _land_ , no less - but it was still a little shock to realise he was about a quarter of the way disconnected already. On the negotiations side, the only thing that caught his attention was that he gathered Mars was going to look super fucking pretty by the time they were done with it, because Meenah had figured out Crocker was a sucker for a bright, fresh-looking place. It didn't interested Meenah nearly as much as more kinds of tech would, but it was something she could easily acquire, which was the climax of her personal siren's song. Anyway, who'd want to rule a boring-looking dustbowl, right?

Wow, how about indulging in a deeply beloved, lived-in hobby right now. That thought had been plain proof that he thought just like Her--sometimes!--any time was far too often. After the passing crawl of millennia of company, how could he dream of avoiding it? There were arrangements were in place to ensure that soon he'd be himself, unmoored, unmonitored, and uncontained but for the kind of choices he'd share with every other lucky sucker in the rest of the populace, and he'd still think like _Her_.

Meenah shut off the sound in the throne room with a little wave of her fingers at his biggest in-room camera, acting cutesy as Crocker went tight-faced to shove down a more informative reaction. He let his two latest owners slip from taking so much of his awareness, expanding through the space that had been made available to him and theoretically a part of him. The castle was still not Ship, though, providing no parallel to joy like the embrace of motion, only the speck of satisfaction in making it ring like a bell in the thin atmosphere as he let himself have a voice; he was always going to carry Her with him, and so he screamed.

He'd never heard Signless's farewell to life. Every record and suspicion of record, except for memories, had been eaten and shit out and burned up before he'd quit shaking from installation fevers, but he remembered the stories he'd been told of it. Here, new universe, have a spiritual successor, though he wasn't the one to go to for righteous anger. Despair's the word, always, again--all of this was going to come around again--

 

*

 

Eventually: the black of space, tantalisingly unfamiliar still.

For no good reason, there was an instant where he became more aware of the cameras on the outside of the castle. Mars's plains were dead and red as they'd been for longer than he'd been Ship, featuring nothing to invite this increase in alertness, but the fact of the cameras' feedback did a pop-up in the centre of his brain as something he hadn't realised he was already thinking about. And he looked out and wanted to sift through the histories of this planet and galaxy again, and he looked at the unimpeded view of the sky from horizon to horizon and fell silent, surprised to feel his chest heaving, and at how far that little exertion felt from despair.

He might not ship out in Battleship Condescension again, if his and the humans' plans were successful, but curiosity was about the hardest thing about him that there was to kill. There was more strangeness to deal with; there always would be, and he could get there to experience it.

Cumulatively, sighs and mutters reached a windspeed of 2.9 m/s and straightened backs cracked at 1.0034 decibels throughout the castle as the inhabitants expressed relief and went about their own tasks better. You'd think they'd be used to him, since it wasn't like anybody had been able to keep Battleship Condescension soundproofed for long either. Eh, fuck it, he'd keep the coffee in the break rooms warm and not disgusting for longer than usual. And had probably better send out a general alert to cart over more back-up batteries that he could fill up for when he was gone right the fuck out of here forever. That was enough generosity from him.

He already had a lot more attention to divide, since the castle didn't require as much input as Ship did. He looked through each outer camera in turn, analysing for the longest stretch of time the one that aimed in the direction they'd first emerged into this universe from. No use sending sensors out that way, because they hadn't found anything there for as long as they'd been in this universe. What were other helmsmen doing, under the command of a new empress alongside their ships and captains? They probably still didn't have much attention to spare. What was Gl'bgolyb's favoured young daughter for Alternia like, anyway, and how were trolls and the Conquered Expanse doing under her rule? The isolation ruling for juvenile trolls was so fucking ridiculous, and meant he'd never been able to catch a hint of what was up on Alternia. Why had the Rift's Carbuncle chosen to exile Meenah Peixes to this emptier and more innocent universe instead of battling the latest heiress? Did it matter at all that Battleship Condescension's crew were exiled along with her; was the intention chaos or was there a true plan?

Figuring out the agitations that rose and fall in a horrorterror's puzzle sponge was the exact point where you should stop doing what you were doing.

He swung his focus to Earth, shadowy up to a razored blue edge where the sunlight dawned on the ocean, decorated with loose swirls of clouds in gold and white and grey. But looking from the outside was pointless - he wasn't here for poetics about how it looked kinda pretty, and knew his destination. He focused on integrating incremental power surges with the live transmissions - the Earth-based security feeds, Meenah and Crocker's vid call - to increase his data transfer to his bots on Ship, and in Crockercorp Central Lockdown. He wanted a full back-up of himself in his place if Meenah was covering her tracks about how she was disconnecting him - what if she tried to lose his mind somewhere between the castle network and his troll body? He wanted to know every last thing about Lockdown before he had to go live in it, and that's where his robots came in.

Why no one thought to keep an eye out for microscopic maintenance bots repurposed as spyware, he had no idea. Humans figured other trolls had done most of the caretaking when he was the Helmsman in more than name, but roughly any alien who'd encountered trolls should have the imagination to think he'd prefer the tenderness of tempered mori-titanium to having the average example of his speciesmates cavorting in his insides. Ship's crew, at least, had the excuse that they thought all the lives Meenah had stolen on his behalf kept him in peak condition, only occasionally in need of a technician. He'd never used the bots for spying on Ship, either, since it had been expected that he'd be everywhere.

Finding Crocker's current conference room was easy - he'd pinpointed who her secretary was as soon as he got access to a personnel roster, and from there her schedule was open. It took longer before enough of his bots made it to the same place in order to do anything particularly effective. Microscopic was great for getting around undetected, but it meant he needed a build-up of cooperating bots to get to an organism that could process data on the scale he wanted.

The conversation was winding up once he managed to get good sensory feedback. Jane Crocker was as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the cameras close to her, in her office, as she was in the ones that conveyed her image over the distance between Mars and Earth. What was she going for today, in a light blue skirt suit with green accents? That shit mattered with her, he'd heard her complain about some interns fresh from the Rebellion Council for unprofessional attire, and asking her secretary for a last friendly lookover before she had to meet bigwigs, or various members of her extended family. She probably wanted to look approachable. She was beaming that kind of friendly intention at Meenah, who grinned complicitly back at her. Negotiations must have gone down a treat.

Crocker affirmed that the trade would take place at once - Meenah's goods delivered at the same time that the Helmsman was to be sent away. She kept smiling as Meenah turned moody and closed the call.

"A fish tank," Crocker said, and stood up from the conference room table. She went straight to a door near the bank of windows at the back of the room, and he hastily poured his bots that way. There was one camera, aimed mostly at the area near the door, and he had to make rapid adjustments to augment its abilities with his bots' and get a greater visual span.

By the time he was done, Crocker had hung up her suit jacket in a closet against one wall, and had kicked her shoes off in front of it. With a contemplative look down at her shirt, she undid her bow tie and unbuttoned her collar and then one more button on the shirtfront. The corporate striptease stopped there, and she walked a few steps into the middle of the room.

"A fish tank with a decade's worth of grow-your-own sea monkeys," she said, with weight. "Screaming--oh, but also static! _A dog_. Namesakes, the most dangerous thing of all!"

She gripped the back of a chair, then bent over it to thump her head gently and repeatedly off the table. 

"It! Is so! _Ridiculous!_ "

Jane Crocker then proceeded to have an absolute wiggler tantrum. Kicking at the furniture and everything - although she barely connected, and suddenly it struck him that the furniture in this room was heavy wood - no wheelie chairs here. And the bottom of the legs were swaddled in cushioned fabric, resting atop carpeting, so even when she did shift anything the sound was absorbed. When she wasn't whaling on the furniture she was throwing her hands up and clawing at the air near her hair, without touching, and doing a very, very quiet equivalent of yelling her head off.

Jane Crocker had a whole specially-prepared tantrum room. Oh god, he was totally going to have to make her flip the centrepiece table, in a wholly literal manner.

He laughed, back to feeling the presence of his body as he heard himself wheezing worse than the screaming usually made him do - his body was a lot less used to laughter, after all. He'd figured out Crocker's outfit: She'd totally been going for the opposite of Meenah. Light colours where Meenah always had black, bright green where Meenah always had fuchsia. And all such a good match for Crocker's bright can-do smile you wouldn't easily guess it was a quiet attempt at a "fuck you".

Mental note, keep an eye on this room in the future.

Technically he had more important things to do. But he kept a lot of attention on Crocker, until she'd subsided to sitting in a chair with her arms crossed, fuming at her own thoughts.

 

*

 

In the following days, Dave Strider was not once allowed to make any news announcements on behalf of the Rebellion Council. Thank fuck, because it meant that it was fairly easy to tell what was going on.

There were still a lot of suspicions from the general public about Kid Crocker and how likely she was to have sympathy with Great-Grammy Imperious Condescension. So he'd have to be prepared to get caught in crossfire of assassination attempts.

The story of the Helmsman of Battleship Condescension being returned to freedom was met with a lot less trepidation than he'd expected. Ship's crew who'd escaped Meenah early on and joined the Rebellion decades back had managed to make it clear how long he'd been her tool, and hadn't known him well enough to be able to recount the suspicious things like knowing her name, her laughter, the dig of her elbows, or how much appeal hurtling through the laws of physics held. He was a slave no longer, and a lot of humans found it a wonder.

But they weren't stupid, so Ship's engine, navigation system, and most of the life support had been taken well apart long before they'd even considered the subject of his release. He wouldn't be able to fly it across a road, never mind take it to the Condesce on Mars so she could start a more hostile takeover of Earth. He would miss it - he'd probably cry he'd miss it so much.

Legs, though. That was going to be something.

 

*

 

When all necessary generators were running on Mars Base, all castle operations had been automated or turned over to crew, he was completely decoupled from the system and transferred bodily to an Earth Rover. It wasn't the most dangerous part of the process, though it felt a lot like the close approach of death, with his perceptions instantly dwindled to nothing but his own senses, and actions to his body and the Rover. By now, that was far harder to take than when his senses and functions expanded.

Meenah said goodbye. Quickfire, a twist of a snarl, and the era ended.

He drove away from Mars Base, the palace and the more rudimentary buildings that marked where the Crocker Corp pretense that had kicked off the whole Mars mission.

When he reached the prearranged spot, he waited for 17 seconds, engine idling, and then there was green lightning.

It resolved into a dog and a whole lot of shit. Just a bunch of stuff. Everything Meenah had negotiated for was piled around the animal.

"I can see why Jane was complaining about ridiculousness," he told the dog, which barked back very quietly. A lick of green lightning ran along one upraised paw.

The arrangement was that the Mars trolls could come get everything in half an hour, but there was every chance somebody would be coming over to try and shoot them all or detonate a buried bomb in a second. He got out of the Rover, just him in his body. His legs weren't much use yet for walking, but his psionics didn't disturb the dog any. When it started to growl, it was in a completely different direction.

Whatever was coming was too late - he was beside the dog in an instant, and they were gone in a flash of green.

The decontamination chamber they both appeared in had to be on Moon Base. It lit up amber, which he was pretty sure meant they were halfway to being a problem. "Promise I thought I got rid of all the bugs!" he said, waving at the nearest camera. He'd had to run so many last-minute micro-bots through his bloodstream after all the monitoring devices Meenah had put in his foot, and he'd even needed to dedicate the majority of them into making something big enough to unpick a few seams in his jumpsuit on the drive over.

A screen scrolled down from the ceiling next to the camera. After a second's flickering, a _You Tried_ gold star appeared on it.

"Oh, fuck you very much, probably-Strider."

A very embellished RL signature appeared in the corner.

"Maybe crawl out of each other's back pockets and I'd still be able to tell you apart!" But he laughed, wheezing. "God, you pissed her off. Take one of these each." With a lick of psionics, he arranged his hands into a double thumbs-up. "Sheesh, that sprained a couple of somethings..."

The screen gave him a countdown from 4:05, after which 7 biological agents would be scrubbed from his system and clothes and he would no longer be venomous to the touch. There was also a note about the dog.

"Can you read?" he said to it, and then, "Whatever, I live for assuming I know more than everyone around me. You're going to be fine too, and you should be aware that you are an entirely tolerable dog, as dogs go, quote-unquote. Her words, not mine."

It barked the same subdued bark as before. But it stopped staring at him with unusual focus, so he was going to assume he hadn't pissed off his transportation.

When decon ended, he got his second surprise, a chill shot of adrenaline to keep him on metaphorical toes: The Heiress was here to meet him, instead of waiting on Earth. Businesslike and chipper as ever, she stood in the middle of a semi-circle of bodyguards.

"Hello there. I'm Jane Crocker. I'm glad to finally meet you."

"Hi, Crocker. There's our first problem!"

She put her fists on her hips, projecting a slightly hokey determination. "I never was made any promises this would be easy! What problem exactly do you mean?"

"What's my name supposed to be? I sure don't fucking know!"

"Okay, that one has me a little flummoxed!" She looked it, too, the exact degree of goofy that fit a word like that. She was trying really hard here, serious in attire, relaxed in attitude. "You don't have any interim ideas?"

"How about 'hey, sex machine'?"

"That raises too many questions in the eyes of the media!" Trying so, so hard. That tantrum-room table was gonna get hit a half-inch hard right tonight, if he was any judge! "Well, we'll come up with something, but I'd like to stick to schedule.

"First, let me explain - it was decided that it would be better not to use your psionics too much right from the start, when there will surely be people trying to catch a glimpse of you. Do you mind if we keep going with use of a mobility aid?"

It was a motorised wheelchair, one of the kind of things that made him think, fleetingly, of taking humans to Alternia by the cartload. Their society was far from perfect, but for the way they at least developed technology like this, he wanted to plaster You Tried on all of them in reach and display them to his fellow trolls. He kept hold lf that feeling, rather than disgust at all the downgrades in transportation he was experiencing today. First the Rover, now this? At least he was moving. And the dog thing was pretty fucking boss, because that was something even he found really, excellently weird.

He zoomed alongside Crocker, ceding only the fractional lead that she needed to guide them where they were supposed to be. They did a check with Earth in a communications room to ensure everything was at the ready, and then the bodyguards stood back from them. The dog herded him and Crocker closer together, and then there was another flash.

"Home, sweet home," he said, looking at the foyer of Crocker Corp Lockdown. On Earth, unhidden, and kind of almost free. "Right?"

"I'm given to understand trolls aren't much for alcohol. Perhaps you have something else you'd prefer to take the edge off travel?" Crocker said.

"I live and breathe edges."

"In that case you must tell me your comfort foods. I promise, it's not just a company thing - I like to cook. And, of course, there are a number of trolls working here now who've developed an idea of what Earth foods work and do not work for the troll palate, so there's a good chance I'd be able to work something out for you."

He levelled Crocker a look. She was blandly, forcefully cheerful, looking at him as if waiting for his exceptionally polite rejoinder, and then the dog barked again. Just a little louder than before.

"Oh! Speaking of favourites!" Jane turned from him and towards the dog, rifling through the cards of her sylladex. A freezer bag popped out and onto the floor, and then she rummaged through that. Thanks for the trip! Here, let me convey appreciation properly..." She waved a massive cut of meat in the air and placed it on the ground.

The dog did not move.

"I'm not irradiating anything, Bec! It was already irradiated to state health and safety standards when they packaged it, and does not need to get lit up to the point of giving a Geiger counter a panic attack!"

With an air of dignity and possibly also sulking, the dog approached the steak. It investigated it with slow licks and nips, until enthusiasm that fit a dog much more took over and it practically inhaled the rest, then gnawed the bone in satisfaction.

"Grandma Jade spoils you so bad," she said severely. "I trust you'll see yourself home?"

The dog's tail wagged. It turned from Crocker to him, whuffed, and took itself off. Aw, it said goodbye! Definitely an adequate dog. (Sorry, Disciple. No more betrayals from now on, I promise; in all else, I salute you.)

"Well, if you don't want a drink," said Crocker, "time for something a little more strictly business. Your bio-technician has been pre-approved by the Rebellion Council. A Mr Arty Walkinson. We should head that way - there are some serious concerns about your physical well-being after the special investigations into the Battleship, so we either hope to help you or get educated about what we needn't worry about."

"Steer me there. I've done enough steering," he said, mostly to make her uncomfortable, and was surprised that she took hold of his wheelchair and took it over to an elevator. Then he extended the footrest so he could stretch out a little in the seat, because hell, like he _hadn't_ done enough steering in his time. The Heiress! doing her best to cater to him! God, she didn't even seem embarrassed. It was so tempting to think about kicking her ass, or sending ten thousand selfies to Her Imperious Condescension: The Deposed.

Corcker cleared her throat as the door of the elevator closed on them. "And speaking of the Rebellion Council ... I had thoughts of making you a press packet, but a file of that sort seemed to be a touch too exploitable. It's probably best if I speak frankly, one-on-one."

He made a lazy gesture. She chose to interpret it as permission to continue.

"You're under a great degree of suspicion. I am too, as I'm sure you know. You've been made to work closely with the Condesce as a vital part of the flagship many consider her greatest weapon, while for my part she's my dear old great-grandma who made me privy to any number of company secrets, before the fighting came into the public eye. The Rebellion, and now the Rebellion Council's Stabilisation unit, are deeply unlikely to look on those facts with a forgiving eye any time this century. Well, decade. I intend to work on it. They _are_ trying to keep you safe - but they will also be dispassionate about their approach to you, to the best of their ability. That's as an organisation. I'm not sure what the personal approach of Mr ... Walkinson, that's right, will be."

 

*

 

Walkinson was fine. Kid Crocker, on the other hand, was weird. Just after introductions she suddenly called down a posse of bodyguards, like the bio-tech hadn't been able to menace them all he wanted for upwards of ten minutes, and then she spent the rest of the time skulling behind them near the door. Maybe that was what they got for putting a kid in charge of this - she probably thought Arty was cute. They looked to be about the same age.

"So. No name, huh? You're not a Helmsman anymore - the designation's old news. Mostly," Walkinson said. He was dismantling the basal spinal port, and it wasn't really an ideal time for chattiness, but it was actually kind of great listening to him. The guy was deadpan like an entire murdered kitchenware range. Nothing hurried his voice and it sounded like nothing worried him, and he'd done a great job with the anaesthetic. Whatever potential bombs might be remotely detonated within his spine, they could not be that big a deal with this dude at the job.

"How do trolls handle that kind of thing? Socio-culturally, I mean. I've always meant to ask some of the people I know, but it's one of those things that keep slipping my mind."

He worked on peacefully, the two of them chatting, the bodyguards sweating as they organised protection for the building. It turned out the bomb was a couple thousand sweeps old, anyway, and chances were pretty fair Meenah had totally forgotten about it the longer it turned out there was no use for it - but body minus bomb was a good solid equation he could nonetheless get behind.

 

*

 

"Physical condition: more or less peak," Walkinson said one day, looking over his medical results. "I don't get it."

"What, nobody told you about the life-sucking that kept me alive?"

Okay, that felt like shit to make fun of. He walked himself into these nihilism traps all the time, but sometimes the snapped shut. At least he got the pleasure of Crocker muttering 'life-sucking' to herself over in the corner, somewhere between suspicion and horror - there was something about watching these bio-tech sessions that made her get halfway to her tantrum-self, some of that armour-plated cheer dropping away.

"Yeah, I heard about that. Not sure it accounts for how you somehow have muscle but it just sort of ... doesn't know what to do?"

"The psionics can go through all parts of my body. The eyes channel most of it, but ... I guess it's also because I was Ship, and the plugs were all over me, but the energyhad to be directed through me in basically all my cells. So my muscles got stimulus, but the stimulus had just about jack shit to do with moving."

"Better change that. I recommend a walk."

"Is that how you stay on brand?" Crocker chirped hp.

"Sure is," Walkinson said. By now his deadpan had recognisable inflection - he sounded teasing. "All I need to do now is have a son, and train him to live up to the most effective methods of ingress. Can't go too far in living up to a moniker. So, is this business going into making pottery soon? Or perhaps the lucrative field of fertiliser, considering what most people think when they hear the word 'crock'."

"You'd be able to give me so much guidance, considering your full up on it!"

"Sorry, ma'am. That was over the line of me - I'll break this bad habit yet," Walkinson said in his customary shut-down of friendly talk.

That seemed like a good place to say something, as Crocker waved a hand in response, rolling her eyes.

He cleared his throat like he cared about being polite and told her and Walkinson, "Please."

Crocker's hand froze in mid-air. It wasn't like her usual freeze, though, where she was doing her best to hide reactions, because she turned her to stare at him in shock - just like Walkinson, in fact, who started enough to stop fiddling self-consciously with his screwdriver and had a facial expression.

In the ensuing hustle, he knew that he'd moved faster in his life. How the fuck would he not have, Shipping out across the galaxy fit to make a Disciple-like voice in his memory sigh about a missed opportunity for adorable puns. But the degree to which the other two focused on getting him out of the building was enough to loosen up his senses, like it was time to decouple those section by section. Having the building still all around him via the micro-bots didn't make much of a difference, the more he knew distance was about to come between his physical body and the place he was plugged into. And then the distance became real. There was a doorway behind him, glass and chrome.

A path, one of several along a central-access driveway, stretched before him for the express purpose of taking footfall after footfall towards the rest of a world.

"'Please'! Of all things. What the hell was that?" Crocker demanded, linking arms with him. She gave him a distracted pat on the shoulder, humphed, and then socked him in the same spot.

"Ma'am," Walkinson said, with an edge.

"Oh my god I won't break," he told Walkinson.

"I'm uncomfortable with flirtatious behaviour on the job. A mental report on inappropriate behaviour is bring filed as we speak."

Crocker made one of her tantrum-noises, but unmuffled. "I am not engaging in any flirtation! I am offering a friend my support!"

They reached the end of Lockdown grounds and signed out. With a confirmation call from the gateway security back to the main building, they stepped outside.

"I'm not about to collapse," he said. Should have sounded pissed off about it, but he couldn't. "I just ... I was a world, when I was Ship. I stopped being part ... part of..."

"Hey!" Crocker hissed behind his back.

Walkinson flailed under her look. It took a lot more glancing and flailing before he took up the free elbow, like this was the ultimate way to indicate friendly support. It was just a hand, rather than Crocker having more of a hold; but he liked how Walkinson added a swipe lf his thumb before giving it up in discomfort.

"It hasn't been like this..." He looked up at the sky. Blue, only that one sun-star in sight, friendly and barely burning anything, and a pale white moon over at the other side of the sky. "I mean, it's not familiar. Here, exactly." He looked around at the people going about their business, mostly humans, just a sprinkling of trolls because they were so close to Rebellion business. "But I haven't had anything even a little like this... It's. Been a long time."

He took a leaf out of Walkinson's book, and settled his hand very quickly on Crocker's, with a swipe of his thumb as a caress. Because he really was grateful.

They didn't go too far, because he was really still practicing how walking worked, and sending surges of psionics over his body half the time to puppeteer himself, rather than letting it do the work with muscle alone. Walkinson kept a close eye on him and gave advice, and also began plotting an exercise regime.

"This sounds more like what you'd do. The subjugation of the unwary for their own benefit," he told Crocker.

" _Hey_ ," Walkinson said said, even more sharply than he deployed those 'ma'am' if he thought Crocker was too full of vim.

"Don't suck up so hard. Your boss can't even fire you, it's up to the RC!" It was actually sort of cute how the dude got with the low-key attempts to keep him in line. He figured Walkinson really liked Crocker. 

"We shouldn't be out here too long," Walkinson said. "And we should leave through the back. Just so we can dodge any potential dangers."

"Ooh, smooth subject change."

Crocker was grinning at both of them like she was enjoying dinner and a show. "You make a good point about hurrying," she told Walkinson. "Taking the front or the back makes no difference, though - how are we to know that any assailants aren't waiting right outside the deliveries door."

"Fair." Walkinson played with his milkshake. "You're admirably dedicated to your role. Considering all the danger involved, I can't help but tinker away at the question of why."

"It's mine," she declared. A little firmer than she needed to be - she clearly didn't like to be challenged on it. "My role to do well in when I'm supposedly built to fail at it! I refuse to let ... rumours of how the Condesce controlled my family rule what's true today. I want to show everyone - the RC, the public - that I'm not ruled by whatever oddities the woman posing as my great-grandmother got up to half a century ago.."

"It's all so internally driven? You--forgive me if I overstep, here. But you don't seem ... spiteful."

"And. I don't want to disappoint my dad."

That was unexpected. "Big Nose Crocker, right?" he asked, and she kicked him under the table.

"If you _must_. My dad's ... he doesn't deserve any of the things that have been said about him. He's probably the family member that the Condesce has had the least to do with! But because I'm heiress, it reflects back on him, and he gets treated with almost as much suspicion as me. Besides!" And here, she cheered up. "It's not like he raised me to do anything by halves! I'd like him to be proud. For a real reason."

"I get that," Walkinson said. "I feel pretty much the same about my bro."

There was a strange moment where he stared reminsicently at the table, while Crocker got this immensely fucking smug look on her face. So smug that it was almost enough to punch her back on principle, except the operating principle here was supposed to be pacifism.

"Oh god _dammit_ ," Walkinson breathed, and looked up at her. His expression transformed from trepidation to shock. "You did not know, what the fuck."

"Waiter!" Crocker waved a hand at the nearest one, beaming at them as they approached. "Could I have some tea? Earl Grey blend, thank you."

"You fucking knew!" Walkinson said through his teeth.

She buffed her nails on her jacket. "Remember how Dad taught me not to do things by halves? That includes the old 'gutsy gumshoe' bit, as it happens. Of course I had to do a little digging on the technician I'd be working closely with for months." She seemed to be a little angry. "Walkinson! You little _shit!_ I guess I should feel lucky you didn't go for 'Walker' and make the fake name _really_ obvious!"

"It was close," he admitted, and she flailed her fist in front of his face.

Finally, they started to explain. This happened right as the tea came, so that Crocker could return to smugness as she reintroduced Arty Walkinson as being part of her childhood best friend four-person selection menu: Dirk Strider.

"Now _I'm_ pissed off!" He also flailed at his technician. "You are totally that Strider's family. Just look at you. How did I miss this?"

"Look, it was mandatory. The RC wouldn't have assigned me if they knew we used to chat, but I have the ability to do this for him, and keep you safe, Jane..." He smiled. "It's nice to get to call you by name, finally."

That was going to be the next step. A non-literal one. He watched them grinning at each other, inanely repeating each other's names in different ways. He was going to find himself that, and tell it to them, and they'd welcome it with a kind of welcome he had not quite thought plausible before. Not yet, though. Soon. They'd all three of them have a real talk.

Or he could go fuck it and pick 'Sunshine' for a title. It was such a nice day out.

"Another maniacal grin," the man now known as Strider mourned.

Fine, fine. It didn't sound so bad to keep looking for a while, either.


End file.
